


Send the word over there

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Battlestar Galactica References, F/M, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Museums, Romance, Sick Character, Texting, WWI references, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 22:43:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10672284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: McBurney insisted on daily meetings of the entire staff; the only way Mary had found she could keep up with her work was to answer texts and emails during what must have been a taste of Purgatory.





	Send the word over there

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Pack Up Your Troubles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10663122) by [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch). 



**Who’s SisterBritten?**

??? 

_How much Dayquil did u take the whole bottle I told u I’d cover_

SO HELP ME PHINNEY IF WE LOSE THE GRANT BECAUSR OF YOU BLOODY COW 

There’s no way I’m letting u drive home u belong in bed u just texted me in Spanish 

??? WTF ??? Who’s texting me about a grant 

**_M-- u didn’t silence your alerts_**

i don’t think you meant to text me 

[cat emoji] [mouse emoji] [yellow stop light emoji] 

 

“Well, well, well. What do we have here? The source of all the distraction, it would seem, the ruination of yet another meeting. Hand it over, Miss Phinney,” Clayton McBurney declared, his blue eyes glaring at her; they had an uncanny resemblence to marbles or maybe glass eyes and Mary had wondered whether the man could be blind and just fooling them all. It was the kind of thing people **would** wonder about Clayton McBurney, their interim director, along with what meds he was on, should be on, had abruptly stopped taking or whether he was the first encounter with a poorly constructed Cylon. His head was shaped somewhat like a toaster and Mary was momentarily distracted by the image of the chrome sides gleaming atop McBurney’s shoulders, the toast popping out half-burned making her nauseated. That was another sign of her illness and her ineffective treatment, the aforementioned bottle (and-a-half she would not admit to), her woolgathering when her boss was gearing up to eviscerate her in what would at least prove to be a more interesting staff meeting than usual, albeit sadly no shorter.

“Are you wearing mascara?” she blurted out. The chorus of gasps and half-choked laughter was distant, kept that way by the throbbing ache behind both her eyes and outlining her sinuses beneath the pale cheeks she’d forgotten to conceal with cream blusher.

“How dare you!” McBurney yelped, his voice high-pitched, tinny. The Cylon theory jumped up in her differential and she closed her eyes to try and remember what she was supposed to do next. The phone, which she had managed to switch to vibrate from the ping, buzzed in her hand; she didn’t want to try and figure out who was writing back. When she opened her eyes, Jed was looking at her with concern and not amusement and McBurney was red-faced and quivering.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. She sounded like a sullen teeanger, the small part of her that was not overrun with virus or cold medicine observed. Her response drew an outright laugh from Anne Hastings, a mean, gleeful cackle that meant Anne thought she could use Mary’s remark to her own ends. If she could have cared about it, she would have, but she mostly knew she needed to make sure McBurney did not wrest her phone from her hand and peruse the jumbled, embarrasing texts. She couldn’t remember exactly, but in addition to scrambling the recipients, she was pretty sure there were a few choice words about McBurney. Possibly the Cylon thing.

“I. Want. That. Phone,” McBurney said, reaching towards her with all the malevolence of a ferret. She tried to draw her hand back but she was too slow and McBurney’s hand closed around her wrist.

“You don’t want to do that, Clay,” Bridget said calmly. “You’ll bring the whole HR department down on your head. And with reason.”

“Do you think I care? I’m no lily-livered coward!” McBurney declared, tightening his grasp on her, squeezing her when she coughed convulsively. She saw Jed rising from his seat, felt Sam shift next to her.

“She’s got the flu, anyone can see it,” Sam interjected softly. The staff were well aware of McBurney’s concerns about contamination and infection, how he was conveniently called away to meetings for three full days after any visit from an elementary school class. McBurney dropped her hand abruptly, as if he’d been burned by her. He raised his hand in front of his face and inspected it with a sort of horror. The phone buzzed again.

“A dose of Tamiflu’s what you need,” Bridget remarked. “Let me take care of things here—I’m sure if you call your doctor, they’ll be able to get you sorted properly. That’s that,” she finished, McBurney racing through the door leaving a stack of liberally Post-It-noted binders behind in his wake. There was a sense of relief in the room as they all took a moment to look at each other as if to confirm the bizarre tornado that was McBurney had gone and that they were all undamaged, a Main Street of houses in perfect condition.

“Now you, Mary, I don’t know what you were thinking coming in today,” Bridget began, gesturing at Jed who’d already slung his messenger bag over his shoulder. Mary searched for words but it was difficult. She could feel every hair on her head and they all hurt.

“S’jus allergies,” Mary tried, letting herself sniffle for emphasis. 

“There’s not even one crocus in bloom and the high is twenty-seven degrees today. Allergies! I don’t know whether it’s the flu or just a cold, but you best get home and don’t you think of driving yourself. You’ll end up God knows where,” Bridget said. 

“Come on, I’ll take you home,” Jed said. He’d managed to shove all her things into her bag and had a hand at her elbow, collegially, as if the whole of the museum staff didn’t know how they felt, how close they were to Jed moving in, how much more interested Mary had become in 18th century wedding dresses.

“Okay,” Mary said, dimly aware of the chorus of “Get well soon” that ushered them out the door. The trip to her apartment passed in a fog. She came back to herself, to a degree, once Jed had gotten her tucked up in her bed, an array of hot and cold drinks on her bedside tale, the remote, her iPad and her phone on the folding tray she usually used for breakfast in bed, her pillows carefully plumped and the blinds adjusted to only let in a half-light suitable for napping the day away.

“If I could, I’d stay with you all day and only take care of you, but duty calls…I’ve gotta go back for a while, but I’ll come by after work with some soup and to make sure you’re all right,” Jed said.

“Just all right?” she asked. It was intended to sound flirtatious but it came out plaintive. 

“I think you’d better listen to Dr. Foster tonight, Sister Britten,” he said affectionately, grazing his fingers across her cheek, pushing back some of the hair that was loose around her face. “And for the love of all that is holy, lay off the texting. I have never been so glad to have won that argument about pet names as I was today. But you still might freak out old Mr. Van der Berg and he’ll pull his collection of military insignia if you send him a bunch of instructions for making estrellita sopita in Spanish. And if you go all emoji on Professor Beaufort, she’ll think twice about that paper you guys are writing.”

“Was it that bad?” she said, wanting the truth, wanting a lie, whichever would feel better and not knowing how to choose. Jed would have to know. He stroked her hair again, then squeezed her shoulder through the pilly fleece she’d dragged over her head, still cold under the covers.

“I mean, not really. You didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was mostly just misdirected. And a lot of typos. But next time, you have to listen when I tell you to stay in bed,” he reassured. It occurred to her that he really couldn’t know how bad it had been without canvassing everyone, which would be even more embarrassing, but at least she had not sent that photo she’d considered. She hadn’t, had she?

“No, Mary, you didn’t send a picture. I can tell you’re wondering. Trust me, if you had, that meeting would not have ended that way,” he said, smiling. He knew which one she had considered and probably how her finger had hovered over the touchscreen and thank goodness, he was the only one. “Go to sleep and I’ll try to be back before you wake up, _mi pobrecita_. Doctor’s orders.”

**Author's Note:**

> I just felt like taking the museum-world characters out for a spin again and I thought the mixed-up texts would make a funny beginning and change up my style a little. The title is from another popular WWI song "Over There." Cylons are the androids that rose up and battled humans in Battlestar Galactica-- their negative appellation is "toaster."


End file.
